Lawyer and Senior Vice President of IMANI-Africa, Kofi Bentil, has slammed the government's handling of the energy sector, warning that new fuel levies will do little to address the deep-rooted issues of mismanagement and graft.
Speaking on Joy News on Saturday, June 7, Bentil dismissed the rationale behind the recently introduced fuel levy, stating that taxes cannot solve what he described as a "problem of incompetence and corruption" in Ghana's energy sector. "The problem in our energy sector will not be solved by taxes.
The problem in our energy sector is a problem of incompetence and corruption," Bentil said. "The people who run the energy sector-check-when they leave, they leave very rich." He argued that the tax may appear necessary because someone has to foot the bill, but insisted that a competent administration could resolve the crisis without repeatedly burdening citizens. "I think if we have a competent government, they will structure [a solution]," he said, recalling IMANI-Africa's role in advocating for deregulation. "People forget, but when we got deregulation, in the first few months fuel prices went down." Bentil said Ghanaians would be more willing to pay taxes if they were assured that mismanagement would end and the recurring energy challenges would be permanently resolved. "If they did their work well and then they tax us, we'll pay-on condition that these problems will not recur and the incompetence and corruption will not continue," he noted.
He pointed out that despite the introduction of the Energy Sector Levies Act (ESLA) and several other charges, the structural issues have persisted, leaving the country in a cycle of crisis and taxation. "After doing ESLA, putting all kinds of levies back and forth, we still are left with the problem," Bentil said.
